‘Blogging Essays’ Category
Preface The act of adopting an abandoned plugin reminds me of adopting an orphaned child. On the one hand, the new parents are taking on someone who they didn’t help raise thus far, which forces them to “learn” the ways of the new child to communicate well with them. On the other hand, the new parent is left with the fear that there will come a day that the old parent will come to claim their rights on the child. The analogy I brought can go some way in building an intuition about the problem of orphaned plugins, but if we want to go beyond just intuition we need to take a more in-depth look at the subject. I hope such a look will inspire a discussion that will benefit us all. The chase for a faster plugin installation My prime example for an orphan plugin for this post will […]
[Continue Reading...]How to Write with a Knife: I have been a big fan of CopyBlogger for some time and I try to read their articles as often as I can, though not as often as I would like to. The above article, followed by another one in the series called “Do Long Blog Posts Scare Away Readers?“, have some really good advice for bloggers. I have implicitly tried to follow some of them because my past training and weakness for the English language, but having them spelled out succinctly is really helpful (I already caught myself making one of the mistakes mentioned in the article, can you tell which one?). In addition to the above suggestions, I would like to add a few of my own. Please feel free to add others in the comments. Make your titles short, sweet and eye catching. Long titles lose their punch. Proof read. As […]
[Continue Reading...]I have been following the WordPress Theme GPL discussion very closely for as long as I have been involved with WordPress and I am glad that Matt, with the help of the Software Freedom Law Center, has cleared the air. There has been a lot of valuable discussion surrounding this blog post and the issue, here is a small list of what I have read. Lloyd’s analysis on GPL and themes Daniel’s view from the other side of the fence (be sure to read through the comments, there is a lot of wisdom there) WPTavern’s forum post on the blog dev blog post and the forum post(s) leading up to it Brian Gardner wants the community to move on Other miscellaneous posts on the issue I am a huge proponent of the GPL and consider it to be one of the primary pillars of WordPress, both as a piece of […]
[Continue Reading...]The Federal Trade Commission is planning to crack down on bloggers who review or promote products while earning freebies or payments, the Associated Press reported Sunday. “New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers–as well as the companies that compensate them–for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest,” the article explained. via Report: FTC to go after blogger freebies | Politics and Law – CNET News. While I am not a big fan of government scrutiny and general “big brother” mentality, I do believe that this will add to the believability and authenticity of the blogging medium. We at Weblog Tools Collection try very hard to keep commercial interests completely out of the content that we generate and only rely on what we consider to be ethical ads to make ends meet. We also follow […]
[Continue Reading...]I trust Google. I use GMail as my primary email address and store stuff in my mailbox that is of crucial importance to my existence as a citizen of this modern world. Over the past couple of months, Google’s Orkut has dealt a deadly blow to that trust that is making me rethink my allegiance towards anything Google. I am the owner of a midly popular community on Orkut with about 25k users. Since I was given the privilege of being a beta tester on Orkut, I had created a community called Calcutta many years ago and that community has since, taken on a life of its own. It is run by moderators who report to me and I log in every so often to perform maintenance and help the moderators out. My existence is not only a mystery to the members of the community, it is also the source […]
[Continue Reading...]Happy Halloween to everyone! At this All Hallows Eve, I would like to talk about Scary WordPress Moments. Since I have been working with WordPress for some time, I have had quite a few scary moments with WordPress. One stands out in recent memory. Let me start by saying that I am a huge proponent of backing up my blog. I put together the original WP-DB-Backup which has been enhanced and fixed through the years and is a fantastic plugin. I use it religiously combined with a couple of tricks I picked up from readers along the way. I have the plugin backup my databases everyday and email them to a “backup” gmail account. I also have filters setup in the gmail account to delete daily backups as they come in, thus managing space (gmail keeps deleted emails for 30 days). So I have a rolling 30 day backup of […]
[Continue Reading...]I was preparing the following post as a speech for an event, but since I already used the above quote in a comment and the event did not pan out, I would like to post it for my readers. This version is smaller and is modified to suit the medium but I have tried to keep the message as close to the original thought as possible. I hope it helps at least one WordPresser help another WordPresser. I started on my Masters degree in Computer Science after having worked in the industry for over four years. I decided that my education in Physics was not enough because it did not give me the ability to make enough of a difference to the people that I worked for. I could solve their problems and try my very best to make them smile when I left their establishment (I worked as a […]
[Continue Reading...]I never get this right. There are times when I will be reading a post and it feels as if the chronological order of comments would make better sense. At other times, such as the comments on this post on IP Democracy (which has newest comments on top), seems opposite. I actually found it quite difficult and counter intuitive to read through the comments on that post to follow the story as it unfolded. Scrolling upwards on a post is just plain weird. On more popular posts, readers tend to complain when the list of comments grows beyond a certain number and they loose the forest for the trees. The TechCrunch comment threads are simply useless if you want to follow any part of the discussion and I tend to just read the highlighted ones from Michael or the other authors. On the other hand, comment reply threads are unwieldy, […]
[Continue Reading...]About the Author
- Mark Ghosh
An avid fan of business, education, technology and finance. I lead a lean, highly focussed and capable team of Java Back End developers and Front End developers through a maze of complex software wizardry to fulfill the web maintenance needs of a large chemical manufacturer. As per Myers-Briggs Personality Types, I am an ESTJ. I pride in a project completed on time and according to plan. My hobbies include all kinds of technology, anything that I can taste and anything that goes fast or flies in the air. I like to read business books and comics in my spare time.
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Are You Spamming Comments Inadvertently?
In a blog post titles “6 Steps to Kill Your Community“, Matt listed “Allow Spam Through” as the second step and “Don’t Participate in Comments” as the fourth step to killing your community. We treat comments and reader participation very seriously at Weblog Tools Collection. We highlight commenters, try to identify the frequent comments who participate willingly and heuristically remove nofollow tags from the links of commenters who participate in the community. I have personally chosen and thanked frequent commenter by providing them deeper access and rights to the various portals, elevating and applauding their presence within the community and have chosen most of my co-authors based on their participation and passion within the communities that I purvey. In short, I agree with Matt in that relevant comments and passionate participation are the lifeblood of any community. But our little blog gets a lot of attention from spammers. We are […]
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